Digital Asset News Sunday livestream on blockchain finality, Visa's crypto picks, and Coinbase's Bitcoin-backed mortgage product
Rob and Jerry from Costa Rica discuss blockchain finality, Visa's nine chosen blockchain networks, and Coinbase's new Bitcoin-backed mortgage down payment product.
Summary
Rob and his co-host Jerry cover three main topics in this Sunday livestream. They open with context-setting observations — including the collapse in value of Jack Dorsey's first tweet NFT and a new quantum computing report suggesting "Q Day" could arrive by 2030 — before diving into the central topic of blockchain finality: what it means, when fast finality is desirable, and when it is not. They examine Visa's 2023 blockchain research on Solana and Visa's April 2026 selection of nine blockchain networks for stablecoin and payment settlement, identifying Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar as the networks Visa has already moved into. They then discuss Coinbase's new Bitcoin-backed mortgage product, which allows borrowers to use Bitcoin as collateral for a down payment at 250% collateral requirements (or 125% for USDC), with rates 0.5–1.5% above standard 30-year mortgage rates and no margin calls. The episode closes with a Q&A covering altcoin market outlook, the deflationary pressure AI and robotics will place on debt-leveraged companies (with Jerry predicting 30–40% of the current S&P 500 will not exist in five years), generational wealth strategies, and what payments might look like in a decade.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening remarks and context-setting
Rob: All right, everybody. Welcome to the Sunday livestream. I'm joined as ever by Jerry from Costa Rica. Jerry, looks like you put the tokens in and it looks like your Wi-Fi connection is looking pretty good.
Jerry: Let's hope Starlink holds up today, Rob. I've got my fingers crossed.
Rob: Yeah, we'll see. I mean, what can you do? It was a VPN issue. These things happen. There's so much technological advancement and that's what makes things difficult. But today, before we get into talking about finality and what that means for altcoin picks — and this isn't going to be a very popular video, I don't think, because right now as we get into the bear market, no one likes to take a look at altcoins. We all know that the first thing to rebound will be Bitcoin. So we should just talk about Bitcoin 24/7, 365, which we are going to touch on as far as collateral for your mortgage down payment and why I think it's an awful idea from Coinbase. But we'll get into that in a second.
I just wanted to bring this up to everybody: I know the bear market is rough, I know that portfolios are down, but just remember, for as bad a day as you're having, there's always somebody who has it worse. Somebody, years ago in 2021, in a whole other lifetime, bought Jack Dorsey's first ever tweet as an NFT for almost $3 million. And today that is worth roughly five bucks. Jerry, what's your thoughts on putting things into perspective and realizing it's not just a bad day for everybody, but there's a worse day for somebody?
Jerry: It really reminds me how important it is to try to incorporate a forward-looking perspective into the things that I'm doing today. I can't tell you how many times I've assigned — we'll just call it an extraordinary value — to something that was promising today that really didn't fit a long-term thesis. That valuation had a lot of opium in it, not a lot of tangible evidence behind it. And hence why I have 70 altcoins in my wallet.
Rob: Yes. Altcoins, man, they came out of nowhere. And for some of them it was just like, this is the next great thing. Because people would say, "Why get into Bitcoin? It might go up 2x, it might be a 4x, 7x, 10x." Which it did do — roughly a 7 to 8x from its all-time low in 2022. Even then, people would say, "Well, I still want to get into altcoins." And fine — that's what we're talking about today. But remember, there's always somebody who's having a worse day than you, and that is the guy who purchased an NFT of a tweet for almost $3 million. So congratulations to that person.
Quantum computing FUD and the four-year cycle
Rob: Also, to throw a little FUD on the fire — this is from friend of the show Coin Bureau — there's a new quantum computing report out. Now, if you don't know what quantum computing is, there's a link in the description where Jerry and I actually talk about this. It's about five minutes and debunks a lot of things. But we're not going to get away from the FUD. It looks like there's a new report that says Q Day — quantum computer day, when it goes live and actually comes in — could arrive as early as 2030, while moving Bitcoin to post-quantum security could take a decade.
The reason I love these types of FUD pieces is because this is great for the four-year cycle believers like myself. Jerry, we've got a halving coming up in 2028, do we not?
Jerry: We do.
Rob: And then usually one year after that is all-time highs. Correct?
Jerry: Historically, that is true.
Rob: And then one year after that, what do we have?
Jerry: Major compression. Optimists call that compression.
Rob: Yeah — crash. It is. So when those things happen, I love these types of stories because I don't believe this is actually going to happen as early as 2030 and we're all going to go down the tubes. Because you have to understand: if you get quantum computing actually up and running, it's going to be controlled by some type of government, given the power that it has. Unfortunately, if that government control falls in the hands of China or maybe North Korea, we've got problems — and it's not going to be just crypto. It's going to be every single thing that's out there. But again, watch that video where we talk about the difference between what quantum computing can do. If you're a four-year cycle believer, this is just one more FUD piece and why people are going to sell and get out. Jerry, what's your thoughts on this piece itself? Do you think it's ridiculous, or do you think it could actually be a good thing for the banks?
Jerry: So, if I needed to design a defense against a quantum computer, I would not be using my MacBook with an M4 chip. What I would want to do — if quantum computing becomes as powerful as we are speculating it will be — is use a quantum computer to create the defense against quantum computing. I don't think that article or that FUD piece has taken into account that quantum computing itself will create the defense against quantum computing.
Rob: I never thought of it like that. That makes a lot of sense. So everybody, it's not going to be a big deal — maybe for the normies. Just be aware of what's happening in the background and hear the narratives that are coming, and you'll be just fine.
Mother's Day acknowledgment
Rob: Before we get into today's topic, I want to remind everybody: happy Mother's Day. I had a beautiful conversation with my mom this morning that lasted about an hour. She unfortunately is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. I'm just glad that she remembers me and I'm happy that we could have that conversation. So everybody, happy Mother's Day. If you haven't called your mom, what are you doing? Call your mom.
Blockchain finality explained — what it is and when it matters
Rob: Anyhow, let's get into today's top story, which is altcoins and what finality means for your bags. This brought me down a rabbit hole. This tweet is from Solana News — and before anybody starts rolling their eyes like, "Oh, this is going to be a Solana-fest," it's not. There are a lot of winners coming in. But when we start talking about Visa and finality, we have to start here and go down that rabbit hole.
Solana's Alpenlow update is set to cut finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds — 100 times faster — and unlocking 75% more block space. I had to go see the biggest Solana bull I know, James from Best Answers, and yeah, that is the truth. Now, just to be clear, this doesn't happen today. This might roll out towards Q3 or Q4 of 2026. But when it does, that is some really fast finality.
The question I have for you is: is finality at this high-speed frequency all it's cracked up to be? Is this great? And the answer is no. Let's go back and talk about how we're doing things now. Debit cards, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal — Visa transaction finality takes one to three business days. People say, "Why the hell would I want that? That's way too slow." But wait — one to three business days for settlement to complete. Even though authorization is instantaneous. Obviously we go to the gas station, we go to the grocery store, and authorization is instant. Finality, though — one to three business days.
Reversibility is the big thing. Right now when we do transactions on the blockchain and they go instantaneously, who are you going to call when you want customer service? "Oh, I fat-fingered that. I didn't mean to send you 10,000 Solana. I didn't mean to send you 10 million Cardano. Could you send that back to me?" No — that's your fault. Sorry. That's pretty much what it is. Visa transactions, on the other hand, can potentially be reversed for up to 12 weeks or longer.
As of 2026, Visa is expanding into stablecoins — we've talked about this non-stop. Binance, Ethereum, Solana, perhaps Polygon, also Chainlink, and maybe Canton — allowing global merchants to settle faster than traditional banking networks. So actually, before we talk about Visa's report from 2023 and their picks — this is one of nine — Jerry, what are your thoughts on finality and why sometimes it can be a bad thing?
Jerry: So in the world of commerce, settlement can equal value, but so can the ability to enact anti-fraud policies and procedures. The thing about finality on a blockchain is — how would you claw back a fraudulent action? And so from a commercial standpoint, I wouldn't get all excited about finality quite yet. I think for you and me, when I'm paying you for your Airbnb, that might be wonderful. When my son needs to pay me back for some money I lent him — when he sends me back the ADA or the ETH or the Solana and once I see it in my wallet I know it's there — I don't need a second thought. All of those things aside, when you're talking about commerce, there is a much larger set of concerns that come into play beyond settlement.
Rob: It has to be. Well said, Jerry. So to build upon that — I'm not going to read through this whole report, it was from 2023 — essentially what they were doing was deep dives on Solana all the way back then. It just talks about how fast it is, the average transaction fees, and compares it against Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, and asks: is this cheap? And of course, people say, "Well, how decentralized is Solana?" Yes, there are different issues that come up around decentralization. But I think the bigger thing would be more about the downtime, because everybody likes to talk about that. And it's a valid point. As a reminder — the last outage was on February 6, 2024. We're looking at two years now. So Solana did what it had to do. It had to break stuff, and that's pretty much it.
Now, there are others out there — Jerry's a big believer in Cardano, I like Cardano, I've got big fat bags and hopefully it works out. As far as downtime, they've never had any. However, there are some things, like Jerry just talked about, where for commerce, finality is not a great thing. But for other stuff — like when we get into the M-to-M economy, I'll explain that in a second — it's actually a good thing. Jerry, what are your thoughts?
Jerry: I think what is realistic is that for a lot of major commercial entities using these blockchain protocols, you will see a lot more escrow being used — funds in a neutral element where finality happens after a set of procedures and protocols are in place. The agent-to-agent economy will be very similar. What we're going to see is the emergence of escrow prior to ownership — escrow contractual ownership if A, B, C, and D are executed.
Rob: Right.
Jerry: But that isn't finality.
Rob: But it could be settlement, and those are two separate things.
Jerry: Exactly. So I think we're going to see this element — this part of blockchain — start to really get better defined as more and more commercial entities come into that space. We're experiencing that compute portal for the exchange of digital assets for services. So if we're experiencing it, I can't imagine every other commercial entity isn't thinking about how they're going to address it and interact with it.
Visa's nine chosen blockchain networks
Rob: Yeah. And just leading off what you said — we have Visa here, and the picks, the ones they actually selected, we talked about this I want to say about a week ago, as far as payments and tokenization. This was on April 29th. We've got nine total.
You've got ARC, which is an open layer one created by Circle — so it's open but you can't really invest in that as far as I know. Base is from Coinbase, also open, but there's no token for that. Canton is one you could get into, and if we take a look at real world assets and tokenization, it's actually the leader for the amount of AUM on it. Polygon has been doing some upgrades. And there's one called Tempo, which is a private platform for stablecoins.
What Visa has already taken into effect: Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar. So if you're looking for some winners, there's a good place to start for what Visa is doing.
But finality — like we're talking about — this is when we actually want it to be fast. We talked about when we don't want it: when you fat-finger something, when someone says they got hacked and there's a dispute or fraud, or when goods and services weren't delivered as promised. That's when slower finality is great. But when we talk about faster finality and we want things to get processed — AI agent payments are big. Machine-to-machine commerce is a big thing, because no one's going to wait one to three days for finality. And that's why we have to have this. Also, corporate treasuries want to move things around. And then there's money markets — if we can tokenize those so that funds aren't just sitting around waiting for banker hours and one-to-three business day settlement, and you can move things around — extrapolate that over an entire year, these are the things you want to get into.
Intelligent routing — the future of payments
Rob: So as far as finality going as fast as possible, that's when you actually want it. But there are other parts. And then we come to this piece: the future is intelligent routing.
Let's say — and this is going to happen — when things go on in the background and no one knows what's going on, that's when everything takes off. Like the internet. Jerry, remember the days of getting that AOL CD to run a little bit of code so you could get on the internet and download a picture after five minutes? Yeah, that sucked. But with intelligent routing, maybe at some points they say, "Hey, this is machine-to-machine, so we want finality quickly." Or, "Hey, this is somebody who went to Walmart and just picked up a canoe and some chicharrón — maybe we're going to let that not be so quick on the finality." That's the future for intelligent routing. Sometimes it goes to near-instantaneous, sometimes it's one to three days. And I think that is the big play. Jerry, what are your thoughts?
Jerry: I agree 100%. I think policies and procedures will adapt to the use case. For instance, I don't need an escrow account to buy an empanada from your empanada cart. We can do our little exchange of digital assets right there — here's my dollar fifty for your empanada, final, no problem, no issues. But it's a completely different scenario when I'm buying a service from you, or a car that has some kind of warranty element, or I'm a contractor working for you and you don't want to pay me for the whole house when I've only just poured the foundation.
Rob: Yep. Exactly.
Jerry: Yet I need to know that you have the money to pay for the whole house as I build it.
Rob: So yeah, it's going to be very industry-specific how those chains and functions and procedures get laid out for individual use cases. And thinking about what you just said, it makes you realize that you actually could have a chain that's super fast — maybe not as essential as we want it to be — that just gets things done. Then you want something middle-of-the-road, not as quick, a little faster than the banks. And then maybe there's a part where we say, "Hey, we don't want finality to settle as quickly as possible," because of what Jerry just talked about — you paid someone to do your roof and there are still holes in it, and you need to claw that back. Because if not, the contractor shows up, you pay him ten Solana, cool, never see him again. That's how money works. So let me know what you think about that in the comments section.
Coinbase's Bitcoin-backed mortgage product
Rob: And then just to wrap up — there's a new program being rolled out by Coinbase. It looks like they're going to be getting into the mortgage business. I saw this from Bitcoin Teddy, whoever this is. It says: "Coinbase — no margin calls for Bitcoin-backed mortgages. Coinbase says its crypto-backed mortgages will carry rates around 0.5 to 1.5% higher than a standard 30-year, depending on borrower profile. Loans feature no margin calls or collateral top-ups."
How big is that?
Jerry: That's pretty big.
Rob: Bitcoin price drops don't change the loan terms. Collateral is only at risk after 60 days of missed payments. So there are no margin calls. It stays there. They don't re-evaluate it like how it was done in the old days of Celsius. But just so everybody knows, this is not for your entire mortgage — they're only talking about down payments.
I had to go through the Coinbase documentation. Let's say you're buying a $100,000 house — which I think only Jerry can do in Costa Rica, because that's not happening in most of the US. Let's say you need a down payment. It's going to be 20%. That's $20,000. What Coinbase is saying is: sure, we'll give you the $20K for that, but you've got to give us 250% of whatever that down payment is. So you need to send them $50,000 worth of Bitcoin, and then they'll pony up the cash.
Now it's 0.5 to 1.5% higher than a standard 30-year, which right now is roughly around 6.3% with the APR. So you're looking at around 7.8 to 8%. That's pretty bad if you're going that route. And just so you know, that's the down payment. If you do $20,000 — in those early months and years, you're paying more in interest than in principal. That's kind of sucky. But if you want to put up your Bitcoin, go right ahead. I will never do this, but maybe I'm missing something. Jerry, what are your thoughts?
Jerry: I think you're going to start to see more and more products like that. JP Morgan already has a Bitcoin-backed mortgage loan for its high-net-worth clientele. So it's basically just a matter of time before it becomes a commercialized retail product. And the minute the world of digital asset holders like us have the ability to collateralize our Bitcoin and the real estate we want to buy as one particular asset, you will start to see the collateralization requirements compress — get much smaller — and the rate we pay for the money we're borrowing will also become closer and closer to the prime rate on which the normal market bases its credit. So I think this is going to get easier and in better favor for us as time goes by.
Rob: As time goes by. And I have PTCD — post-traumatic Celsius disorder — where I gave up a big chunk of Bitcoin for the mortgage of a house in Puerto Rico, and it just didn't work out for me. But again, there were margin calls back then. If there are no margin calls, that's one thing. But then you've got to think: for 15 years — and what's great about these loans is that there's no capital gains tax because it's a loan. That's a big portion of it.
And then there was one more thing before we get into the Q&A: they also offered USDC. So they'd say, "Okay, you can use stablecoins." I don't know exactly how that was going to work — you'd have to give them 125% collateral, or $25,000 of USDC. I was like, why would you do that? You know why? This might actually be a better option. Because with USDC, as long as Coinbase doesn't go down, they pay you a yield — I think it's 3.5%. Genius. That might actually offset some things. Pretty interesting. I just can't do it personally.
Jerry, final thoughts before we get into the Q&A?
Jerry: I think enough has been said on this. I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm in the camp of: there are some of my assets I don't ever want to let go of. I want them in a trust where I can control them until I die, and that trust immediately goes to my beneficiary — Dylan, my son. Hopefully that whole concept of generational wealth will materialize through the processes I've been going through. Because as long as the rules are: debt, you don't pay taxes on, and capital gains, you do — then anybody who is not following the incentive structure isn't playing the game of wealth building.
Rob: Right.
Jerry: And I came here to learn to play the game of wealth building. Having not come from wealth, I would sure like to have some and build it.
Rob: Yes. It doesn't matter where you came from — it's where you end up. That's really what it comes down to.
Q&A — Solana adoption vs. price, and all-time high distances
Rob: Let's get into the Q&A. Gassy has a good point as usual: "With all this adoption, shouldn't Solana be way beyond the all-time high?" Yeah, that's the thing. The markets are the markets, and they're not gauged perfectly. The question is: how much are we really using Solana right now? Is Solana more important than, say, oil? No, it's not. Solana is great, but as far as cost per usage for everything that's out there, I think the majority of the price appreciation might be speculation. Jerry, what do you think?
Jerry: The all-time high conversation is one that's kind of fun to have because it's hard to pinpoint what is accurate or not. But my feeling is a lot of the coins I invested in — Solana is one of them — we may not see the all-time high again for a long time, because the actual all-time high valuation was not built off of the functionality of the protocol. It was speculation of "maybe someday what." And we all know how we overshot so many of these altcoins in the past. I think the smart market hypothesis fits here. Solana is worth today what we're paying for it. All-time highs can't factor into actual valuation. They are merely part of the historical record.
Rob: Exactly. Well said. Going back to it — maybe we got over our skis as investors. Again, remember: if you think it's a bad day, there's always somebody who's got it worse.
And then I want to show you this — how far away we are from all-time highs. Bitcoin is 35% away. ETH is 52%. XRP is 60% away. Solana is 67%. Out of the top 10, who's the worst? Well, Doge. How the heck is Doge still in the top 10? I don't get that — that's speculation. But hey, that's crypto.
Damn, Jerry — Cardano is 90% away from its all-time highs.
Jerry: Not looking good. Not looking good.
Rob: But look at Chainlink. Chainlink is 79% down from its all-time high. And there's nothing but partnerships and talk — Swift, using it for DeFi, the list goes on and on. Especially with all those DeFi hacks that are happening, don't you think they would have wanted to use an oracle like Chainlink that's more dependable? And yet, look how far down it is. I think Jerry's right — this is all speculation.
Bear market outlook — how many altcoins will survive?
Rob: William says, "We're at the beginning of a long bear market. Most of these coins will die." I have to agree. What's your base case, Jerry?
Jerry: Oh, more — much more. I think we're going to get down to, as it pertains to blockchain projects, probably about 10 to 12, 15 on the high side, of actually commercially viable market share participants.
Rob: I can see that. I'm going to give a prediction: somewhere between 10 and 50. That way people will feel better and I will remain undefeated in my predictions.
Ben Armstrong defamation judgment
Rob: Here's a sad story. Kevin Oleary wins a $2.8 million defamation judgment against Ben "BitBoy" Armstrong. Did you ever meet BitBoy, Jerry?
Jerry: No. I was introduced to him early on from Crypto Crow.
Rob: Oh, Jason. I really like Jason.
Jerry: Yeah. But it was clear to see he was a cash-grab guy from very early on. I realized that and stopped following, and then heard about the blowups and all the weird stuff. My heart goes out to him. I hope that he gets his mind and spiritual life and emotional life right so that he can rebuild his life. I hope that for him.
Rob: Yeah. Him and his kids. That'd be great. I mean, he's a dad. It's a rough place. I met him one time — it was in Austin for Consensus, years and years ago, probably like 9 or 10 o'clock at night. I was a little buzzed, this is true. I'm walking down this hallway, I see this guy with wraparound shades on in an already dark hallway, and I'm like, that's weird. I saw it was him. I went over, shook his hand, and said, "Hey Ben, we're all pulling for you," because I knew things were going on. He just grunted and I kept going. That was it. I hope things work out for him.
Generational wealth and the Rockefeller trust structure
Rob: Here's a good one: "Generational wealth usually vaporizes after two generations. Remember to teach your kids so they teach their kids."
Jerry: Absolutely. One of the best lessons we can take — it's almost like a blueprint to follow — is the Rockefeller trust. The Rockefellers put together a self-propagating trust mechanism that ensures it only grows over time, as long as the structural elements of the valuation in the trust are sound. Does the real estate hold its value? Do the shares hold their value? The trust can't overspend itself.
Rob: I never heard of that. I just did a quick search. The Rockefeller trust structure represents a historical model using irrevocable dynasty trusts to pass assets across generations while minimizing estate taxes. That'd be a good one to check out.
Jerry: It's set up so that it cannot be exhausted. It is sustainable because it grows. It will only allow the exit of 10% if it grew 12%. It will only allow 8% if it only grew 9%. That type of thing.
Rob: Jerry, we've got to do a video on this. This is good stuff.
Jerry: There is a game that we can learn to play that we actually can win. We just have to follow the rules of the game — understand them and then follow them. I did not early on when I got greedy, and I'm paying the price for it now. But you ladies and gentlemen of the audience don't have to make the mistakes I made.
Rob: Yeah. As the old saying goes — you have to learn from mistakes, but they don't have to be your mistakes. That's from Warren Buffett. Learn from our mistakes. That's the big thing.
Market outlook — AI, robotics, and the deflationary pressure on leveraged companies
Rob: Here's another one: "Does Jerry see us going lower?"
Jerry: I see a lot of altcoins going lower. I see a lot of the Fortune 500 and S&P 500 going lower. One of the points I didn't get to make last week because of the internet issues — AI and robotics, the deflationary nature of those technologies, are going to put an extraordinary amount of pressure on companies that are extremely debt-leveraged. Because the whole system that governments and corporates have adopted over the last 40 years — from Reagan and Thatcher all the way to now — is debt. Growth through debt. And all you need is to be able to generate more debt to pay off your previous debt. It's just this whole debt refinance, debt refinance cycle, with a somewhat consistent level of revenue to be able to do that.
What I'm seeing with AI and robotics is that they're going to affect that ability to continually refinance. And if you can't refinance, you get debt-constrained and you die. I think we're going to see that. Shitty altcoins are going to exhaust their financial runway. They're going to die. They're going to go away because they're not generating any revenue. When all you have is outgoing expense and no income, you die. I see that in probably 95% of altcoins. And probably about 30 to 40% of the S&P 500 as we know it today will not be here in five years.
Rob: I was listening to the All-In podcast and they were talking about AI companies and how much they're going to be valued at — like Anthropic, whose IPO is being talked about at one trillion plus. And if we throw in more AI companies, like when Tesla does their merger with Starlink and xAI — that's another $1.4 trillion. So like what you just said, the Mag Seven will become the Mag Two or the Mag One. That's just how things change.
Jerry: If you look at the statistics right now, the reason they have the name Mag Seven is because they're the only real seven companies in the index that are actually profitable. All the other ones are treading water. And all it takes to go from treading water to drowning is this much of a push. They have no buffer.
And so we're going to see all kinds of things with the Fed lowering rates to try to keep some of these companies alive, under the heading of "we need these companies providing these jobs." But as you can already see, companies are already leaning out — what did Coinbase just do? 14% of their employees are going to be gone by June 1st or thereabouts.
The point is: if you don't get more efficient, you're going to die. And that includes credit. Now, the government can print bonds until the cows come home, and whoever doesn't buy those bonds, the Fed can backstop them. So the government has license to print. But Fortune 500 companies with their ability to create corporate bonds are now fighting the likes of Strategy, which is putting out bond and credit instruments that pay better than their corporate bonds do. And there is no buyer of last resort for a corporate bond the way the Fed is for the government. So who's going to backstop all that debt? If it's not the government and it's not the bond market, then the company is forced to liquidate, downsize, whatever.
Rob: There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, Coinbase laid off people. On top of that, you had Block — Jack Dorsey's company — and a whole litany of different companies all saying it's because of AI. But the reality is I think they were overstaffed anyhow, from what it sounds like. But I've got to tell you — if you've been laid off, I've been laid off before, Jerry. It sucks. It's the worst feeling in the world.
Jerry: I just got laid off last June. From Hyper. I know exactly what that's like.
Rob: And that's why people watching this video have to look not where the hockey puck is, but where the hockey puck is skating. Digital assets are great and I will always be buying Bitcoin every single Monday on the Cash App. I'll be buying a little bit of altcoins. But I have to diversify a little bit, because the next hotter sector where more gains are to be had is AI. That's just the long and short of it.
Altcoin yields and volatility — will they stabilize?
Rob: Here's a question for you, Jerry: "The yield products that altcoins offer — staking and things like that, or stable coin yields from centralized exchanges — are only beneficial without the threat of impermanent loss. Do you think altcoins will stabilize in terms of volatility?"
Jerry: I think altcoins will continue to melt down their market cap. So even if you're receiving 7% yield on an altcoin, 7% of a dollar is completely different than 7% of 20 cents or 7% of 1 cent. As the valuation of these coins continues to compress and decrease, even really good yields are not going to be attractive until they melt away to nothing. I can't tell you how many of the 60 coins I have in my wallet are in the 12, 13, 14% yield range — but it doesn't matter when they go from $150 a coin to 5 cents. It's pennies.
So I started stacking Tesla in my Roth IRA at my Schwab account because I think Tesla is going to do nothing but expand — with Optimus robots, Tesla trucks, Tesla cars, potentially Tesla motorcycles, Tesla power, the solar elements, the batteries, and then you've got the potential merger of SpaceX, X, and xAI. Not to mention what's coming down the road: the Boring Company, Neuralink. I wouldn't be surprised to see one company with a ticker symbol something like EN.
Rob: I see a memecoin definitely for that. Anyway, that's the ramblings of a senior citizen in Costa Rica.
Sweatcoin pump and closing market observations
Rob: Somebody asked about Jupiter. Rob, what's going on with Sweatcoin? Last week it was two bucks in my wallet and today it's above 25 bucks. I don't know — somebody just sent me a message about how it's up like 600% in a day. But you have to understand: Sweatcoin was a coin I thought would do pretty well. It did not. The good news was that it was free — all you had to do was download an app and start walking. So maybe you have some disposable income now. As an investor I got wiped, but my walking wallet worked out pretty well. I don't know what exactly is going on or if there's any rhyme or reason for it, but if you have the app, definitely check it. Cash out as fast as you can, get some money, and put it into something worthwhile.
What will payments look like in a decade?
Rob: And one more — a nice thought experiment to get out of here. "In 10 years, what will we use as an everyday transactional currency? How will it look? Seamless automated smart contracts? What will payments look like in a decade?"
I would say it'll be a lot more seamless. The whole thing about being able to send an email across the world in seconds is going to be the same thing for payments. There's no reason, with the internet and what we've built, that we can't have faster, cheaper, better payments globally. As far as how things are going to work — Visa is not going anywhere. I thought they were, but they were smart enough to get in front of the train and say, "Hey, we'll just partner up with all these stablecoins, pick nine coins, merge with them, cut out the banks for everything we need to do, and make even more money." That's how I see it. Jerry, any thoughts?
Jerry: I agree. I think we're going to see security protocols around payments get a lot better. I think we're going to see mechanisms that allow that exchange of value to happen much faster — whether it be through retinal scanning, thumb printing — some identification associated with payments is going to get a lot better and faster.
Rob: Better and faster, cheaper.
Jerry: Absolutely.
Rob: That's all we care about.
Jerry: That's all we care about.